THE

LIBERTARIAN

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Women Can't Be Gun-shy About Defense

It is rare for a prestigious institution to nakedly compromise its
research integrity to promote a political agenda. Yet this is what the
Harvard School of Public Health did April 17 when it issued an anti-
gun press release trumpeting its recent study on the murder of women.

The first line of the release states "70 percent of all women killed
in industrialized nations are American." The second line reads, "Link
between household firearm ownership levels and female homicide rates."
Both statements are highlighted in bold italics.

Buried in the text is an admission that the "study cannot prove
causation," meaning that it cannot and does not establish a link
between guns and the murder of women. David Hemenway, the study's
primary author, further concedes that "slightly less than half of all
American females ...murdered are killed with a firearm."

But these concessions come only after the reader has been duly alarmed
by statistics such as "84 percent of all female firearm homicides"
occur in America. And they are quickly followed by Hemenway's
assurance that other studies link guns to a woman's risk of homicide.
Lest anyone question whether guns could help a woman's self-defense,
Hemenway concludes by stating that guns are "often bought for
protection" but, clearly, this tactic fails to do "a good job" in
"protecting American women."

The very title under which the study was published in the Spring 2002
Journal of the American Medical Women's Association politicizes it:
"Firearm Availability and Female Homicide Victimization Rates Among 25
Populous High Income Countries."

The title draws the link that the HSPH press release oh-so-quietly
admits cannot be constructed.

The suggested causality between guns and dead American women has not
been lost on the media. In reporting on the study, for example,
Reuters noted that American homicide rates were closely tied to gun
ownership and quoted statistics from the anti-gun Brady Campaign to
Prevent Gun Violence site. Another news report ended with a link to
the Brady Campaign as a suggestion of what readers could "do" about
the homicide rate.

No one seems to question glaring inconsistencies between the study's
findings and its clear but not-quite-stated conclusions. For instance,
of the nations surveyed, Israel had the lowest female homicide rate.
Yet it is common knowledge that Israel has a higher gun ownership rate
than America.

Nor is the media comparing this study to other international data.
Professor John R. Lott Jr. -- author of
"More Guns, Less Crime" --
spent years researching the claim that high murder rates resulted from
gun ownership. He concluded, "There is no international evidence
backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as
frequently as Americans, yet in 1995 Switzerland had a murder rate 40
percent lower than Germany's, and New Zealand had one lower than
Australia's."

Superficial analysis shows that the study's quasi-conclusions aren't
even consistent with data from within the United States alone. In the
anthology
Liberty for Women, Richard Stevens -- co-author of
Dial 911 and Die -- compared data from sources such as the Bureau of Justice.
His essay "Disarming Women" found that, in 1973, American civilians
owned approximately 122 million firearms and the homicide rate was 9.4
per 100,000 population. In 1992, American civilians owned over 220
million firearms and the homicide rate was 8.5.

Over a twenty-year period, firearms almost doubled while the homicide
rate fell by 10 percent.

There is no question that the HSPH findings are frightening: some
4,000 American females are murdered each year. But why is the data
being stated in such a manner as to terrify women into an anti-gun
stance? An honest study that admits its inability to draw causal links
would simply state facts.

Women should be frightened by the high murder rate because they need
to take self-defense into their own hands, including a gun if they so
choose. Women need organizations like the Portland Firearms Training
Team which has offered free Firearms Safety and Training courses to
battered women in its area. When a newspaper article described how
five battered women had been killed by abusers with guns, the Team
vowed that other abused women would not be left defenseless.

The Second Amendment Sisters came to the same conclusion. In
conjunction with the Patrick Henry Center, SAS has formed the
Virginia-based Patriettes. Its March 12 press release stands in stark
contrast with the one issued by HSPH. The Patriettes declares, "In
response to the endless parade of the raped, the mugged, the stabbed
and the murdered...the Patriettes refuses to allow women to be an easy
target by empowering them to fight back and defend themselves with a
firearm!"

The Patriettes provide a one-day course on gun safety and handling
after which women who have never held a gun can successfully apply for
a concealed carry permit under Virginia law.

Ivy-covered academics should take a lesson from real women acting on
the grassroots level: We won't be frightened into surrendering our
right to self-defense. Don't slant the stats. Give us the facts and
we'll decide for ourselves.

Death by "Gun Control": The Human Cost of Victim Disarmament,
by Aaron Zelman and Richard W. Stevens. The new book from JPFO.

Why does JPFO exist? What motivates us year after year? You can find the
answers in our brand new book.

People have asked us to present the whole JPFO argument in one place. We
have done it. Available now in an easy-reading format and a handy size, the new
book is entitled Death by Gun Control: The Human Cost of Victim
Disarmament.

The message is simple: Disarmed people are neither free nor safe - they
become the criminals' prey and the tyrants' playthings. When the civilians are
defenseless and their government goes bad, however, thousands and millions of
innocents die.